Blood Money

down to meet us.”

Andie moved to the other side of the waiting room, near the window, for better reception on her cell phone. Jack found an open chair facing the television, right beside a man with an ice pack on his knee who was cursing at the Marlins for blowing a three-run lead in the bottom of the ninth. The guy seemed eager to engage anyone who would listen to him, but Jack didn’t bite. Jack was thinking about what, if anything, he could say to comfort the father of a young woman in a coma. Nothing came to him, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. He was so deep in thought that he didn’t hear Andie approach.

“I was wrong,” said Andie.

Jack looked up. “Wrong?”

“Mr. Laramore does want you come up. In fact, he insists.”

Jack considered that word-insists. That sounded like someone who wanted Jack to see the damage he’d inflicted. A strange feeling came over him, no doubt akin to what his death row clients had felt when the guard swung by to say, “It’s time.”

“Okay. Then I’ll go up.”

“You don’t have to do this,” said Andie.

“Yeah, I do,” said Jack.

They got visitor badges from the registration desk, and after a painfully slow elevator ride, the doors finally parted at the fifth floor. Polished tile floors glistened beneath bright fluorescent lighting, and the after-hours quiet seemed only to enhance an assault on the eyes that rivaled snow blindness. The hallway led to a set of locked doors marked INTENSIVE CARE UNIT. Jack identified himself over the intercom, and a nurse’s response crackled over the speaker.

“Room six,” she said, “but only one more visitor can come in now. Maximum of three at a time.”

Jack took that to mean that both parents were at their daughter’s bedside, which heightened his anxiety. He’d been preparing to meet only Mr. Laramore. An angry father was one thing; a devastated mother took it to an entirely different level.

Andie appeared to be on the verge of invoking her law enforcement status to clear an exception to the three-visitor limit, but Jack cut her off. “One at a time is fine,” he said into the intercom, but Andie shot him a look that said it was not fine.

“The mother’s in there,” said Andie, her clear implication being that an FBI agent who also happened to be a woman could only help the situation. But this wasn’t Andie’s problem.

“Rules are rules,” said Jack. “I got it from here.”

He gave her a kiss and entered alone.

The door closed behind him, and the click of the lock gave him a little rush of adrenaline. The lighting inside the unit was much softer than in the hallway, and only the steady beep of patient monitors pierced the silence. In the center of the ICU was the nurses’ station, an open island of charts and records surrounded on all sides by a wide corridor. Lining the outer perimeter were the glass-walled rooms for patients. Most patients were in open view, and the unit appeared to be full, but in some rooms the privacy curtains were drawn, so it was hard to know. Jack spotted several busy nurses making the medication rounds. As he rounded the corner to room six, there was no doubt in his mind that the man walking toward him was Celeste Laramore’s father.

“Thank you for coming,” the man said.

The warm and appreciative handshake surprised Jack, and he even wanted Jack to call him by his first name-Ben. Jack had braced himself for everything from bitter coldness to outright confrontation.

“It was the least I could do,” said Jack.

Laramore was younger than Jack had expected, probably late forties. The stress was all over his face, however, and if this coma persisted, it required no crystal ball to see how quickly it would age him. Laramore glanced over his shoulder toward room six. The privacy curtain was drawn, so Jack was unable to see inside. It made his chest tighten to think of Mrs. Laramore in there with a comatose daughter.

Laramore said, “Let’s go down to the lounge a minute, if you don’t mind.”

Jack followed him around to the other side of the unit, where there was a small room for visitors to catch a moment alone when needed. Laramore got them each a bottle of water from the vending machine, and they sat across from each other at a small table.

Laramore checked his watch. “Tomorrow already.”

Jack noted the time on the microwave oven. It was three minutes past midnight.

“Exactly two weeks from today is Celeste’s twenty-first birthday.”

It was a painful place to start, but there was no easy route. Jack wasn’t sure what to say, so he let him keep talking.

“They tell me someone in the crowd grabbed Celeste by the throat,” he said. “She had no pulse by the time paramedics got to her. They were able to restart the heart with a defibrillator. But. . uhm. .”

“I heard,” said Jack. “She’s in a coma. You don’t have to go into details.”

Ben was face-to-face with Jack but looking past him, numbness and disbelief guiding his line of sight to the middle distance. “I spoke with three different neurologists this morning. Cardiologist came in after that. A pulmonologist is keeping an eye on her to see if she needs any assistance in breathing. Just before you got here, we met a gastro specialist about inserting a feeding tube, if it comes to that. Physical therapist is scheduled to come by twice a day to move her limbs.” He paused, then took a deep breath.

Jack said, “They do have excellent doctors here.”

“Yes, they do. But not a single one of them can tell us if Celeste will ever regain consciousness. If she does. . well, it’s just not clear if she’ll be the same.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” said Jack.

Laramore drank from his water bottle, then shifted gears. “Do you know how much it costs per day for Celeste to stay here?”

“I can only imagine.”

“No, you probably can’t. No one can, until you land in the ICU with no health insurance.”

“Celeste is uninsured?”

“She had student coverage through the university.”

“Why wouldn’t that pay for hospitalization?”

“It would, normally. But see, I got laid off last November. I worked for a plumbing subcontractor, mostly new construction. When the housing market tanked, Celeste took a part-time job to cover her tuition. What I didn’t realize is that she cut her course load when she started working. She became a part-time student.”

Jack could see where this was headed. “A part-time student isn’t eligible for student health insurance.”

“Nope. Like most twenty-year-old kids, I guess my daughter didn’t really see a need. So she never told us she’d had to drop her student coverage. I found out this morning when I spoke with the insurance company.”

Jack didn’t know how to respond. “Are you sure there’s no way around it?”

“The policy was canceled seven months ago. How do you get around that?”

Jack had no answer.

Laramore said, “But that’s not what this is about.”

Jack waited for him to explain what it was about, but silence hung between them. Jack suddenly was aware of the hum of fluorescent lights above them. It was getting awkward, so he spoke.

“When my fiancee told me that you called, I wasn’t sure why you were reaching out to me. But I’m glad you did. One of the reasons I came here is to assure you that I didn’t use your daughter as a decoy to get my client out of jail. Anything you may have heard in the news to the contrary is completely untrue.”

“Jack, let me tell you something about myself: I don’t believe anything I hear on BNN.”

“That’s helpful to know. But. . I’m guessing that you didn’t ask me here just to tell me that.”

“No. I wanted you to know how much I love Celeste. And to tell you that her mother and I want to do everything possible for her.”

“I understand.”

“And we want your help.”

“What can I do?”

He leaned into the table, leveling his gaze. “My wife and I want to sue the jail. Failure to provide adequate